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The State of the Union Bush Forgot to Talk About
By Bernie Sanders, Posted by Bernie Sanders (about the submitter) Page 1 of 4 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Posted by Bernie Sanders - Writer
The president said that "in the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth." I wish that were true. Unfortunately, Since President Bush has been in office it is important to understand that:
-Nearly five million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Amazingly, the poverty rate is higher today than it was during the last recession in 2001.
-Median household income for working-age Americans has declined by almost $2,500; and overall median household income has gone down by nearly $1,000.
-8.6 million Americans have lost their health insurance.
-Over three million manufacturing jobs have been lost, including more than 10,000 in my State of Vermont.
-Three million workers have lost their pensions, and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever.
-The annual trade deficit has more than doubled, and the national debt has gone up by $3 trillion.
-Health care premiums have increased 78 percent; the prices of gas and heating oil have more than doubled; and college education costs have increased by over 60 percent.
In addition, to those statistics, let me just mention a few more:
-Last November, the personal savings rate was below zero, something that up until 2005 hasn't happened since the Great Depression.
-According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 35.5 million Americans struggled to put food on the table last year and the number of the hungriest Americans keeps going up.
-The average college student has racked up nearly $20,000 in debt upon graduation and some 400,000 qualified high school students don't go to college in the first place because they can't afford it.
-Home foreclosures are the highest on record turning the American dream of homeownership into an American nightmare for millions of Americans.
-The number of working families paying more than half of their incomes on housing has increased by 72 percent over the past decade.
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